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Chapter 12 - Chapter 12 – Whispers in the Veil

The streets of the city no longer felt empty. They breathed.

Every wall carried etchings—spirals, fractured words, strange prayers written in chalk. The people walked faster now, avoiding eye contact, whispering about the "one who returned from the Thirteenth Hour."

Kairen walked silently beside Safaa. Their shadows stretched longer than the lamplight behind them. The rusted watch in his pocket pulsed faintly, almost like a heartbeat out of rhythm.

"You feel it too, don't you?" Safaa asked, her voice low.

Kairen didn't answer. He simply glanced at her. She carried a new notebook—its leather cracked, its cover sealed with a symbol of a sun split in half. She had stolen it, or maybe it had been waiting for her.

They turned into an alley where a beggar sat rocking back and forth, eyes rolled white. His lips moved with cracked murmurs:

"Thirteen… thirteen… the Veil remembers what men forget… thirteen…"

Safaa knelt before him, her calm face hiding a storm.

"Who told you that?"

The man shivered violently, then reached out with broken fingers to touch her notebook.

Not her hand. Not her face.

The notebook.

The moment his skin brushed the leather, his body went stiff. His eyes bled tears. He screamed words that made no sense—yet Kairen felt them burn into his bones.

"The timekeeper is blind… the timekeeper is blind… yet he SEES!"

And then—silence.

The beggar's body collapsed, limp, but his shadow remained. On the wall, on the stones, even on Safaa's notebook. His shadow lingered even though his body was gone.

Safaa shut the book tightly. "The whispers are growing stronger. We don't have much time."

Kairen looked up. Across the fog, the distant clock tower tolled.

Once.

Twice.

But instead of counting upward, the bells began counting down.

Twelve… eleven… ten…

He exhaled slowly, words forming on his tongue like a prayer and a curse:

"The city is being wound backward."

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